Philosophical Foundations of Social Research:

A Debate between Positivism and Interpretivism

 
The main differences between Qualitative and Quantitative
Research
With the help of following questions.....

• What is objective and purpose of Qualitative and Quantitative

research?
• What is the nature of data in Qualitative and Quantitative research?
• What is relationship between theory, date, and practice in Qualitative
and Quantitative research? (Inductive or deductive?)
• What is study population in Qualitative and Quantitative research?
• What are data collection methods in Qualitative and Quantitative
research?
• What kind of analysis we do in Qualitative and Quantitative research?
• What are usual outcomes in Qualitative and Quantitative research?
 Conclusion of brainstorming session

•There are core assumptions that underlie the arguments in favour of different methods.

•The choice and adequacy of a method embodies a variety of assumptions regarding the
nature of knowledge and the methods through which that knowledge can be obtained, as
well as a set of root assumptions about the nature of the phenomenon to be investigated.

•Burrell and Morgan (1979) suggest that all approaches to social sciences are based on
interrelated sets of assumptions regarding ontology, human nature, and epistemology.

•Whole of scientific study is based on certain assumptions.

•Positivism follows from one particular set of ontological assumptions, as naturally as

antipositivist epistemologies follow from others.

•Thus a paradigm, e.g. Positivism or Interpretivism, suggests the methods of data collection
and techniques of data analysis. In other words, there is logical connection between
philosophical groundings of the research, methods and nature of analysis.
 What is Paradigm?
•Paradigms are “models or frameworks for observation and
understanding which shape both what we see and how we
understand it” (Babbie, 2007: 32).

•Paradigms are perspectives or ways of looking at reality,

and they are “the frames of reference we use to organize
our observations and reasoning” (Babbie, 2007: 31).

•Paradigms are “a net that contains the researcher’s

epistemological, ontological, and methodological
premises” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2008b: 31).
 Two main Paradigms are:
• Positivism
• Interpretivism

It is essential to consider the ontological and

epistemological premises of positivism and interpretivism
 
 Fundamental nature of social world and
social reality
Positivism
• Essentialist orientation to reality i.e. reality is hard, concrete, and real thing; exists
“out there” and is waiting to be discovered. Human perception and intellect maybe
flawed, and reality may be difficult to pin down, but it does exist. So, reality by
definition is that which is external and real.
• Social world can be thought of as a structure composed of a network of
determinate (precisely defined) relationships between constituent parts. Reality is
to be found in the concrete relationships between these parts.
• Social reality is not random; it is patterned and has order. Without this assumption,
logic and prediction would be impossible. Science lets human discover this order and
the laws of nature. In other words, social reality is being governed by general laws.
• It is an objective phenomenon that lends itself to accurate observations and
measurements.
• What people see and touch is not overly complex but rather reflects deeper essence
of things, people, and relations in the world. Things are the way they are by nature,
or created out of a natural order of the world.
 
 
Interpretivism
• Constructionist orientation to reality i.e. social reality is constructed as a
result of fluid social interaction of social actors in a particular social context.
Hence, human social life is an accomplishment, which is intentionally created
out of the purposeful actions of interacting social beings. Social world is
largely what people perceive it to be.
• Social actions and reality do not possess inherent meanings but rather in
the process of fluid social interaction, social actors attach meanings to social
reality and social actions.
• Thus, what you see as solid empirical reality and take it for granted is
actually a fluid process of appearances that you have come to define as real.
• The subjective sense of reality is crucial to grasp human social life.
• Social life is fluid and fragile and people construct it by interacting with
others in ongoing process of communication and negotiating in a social
context.
 Basic nature of human beings and their
relation to social reality and social world
Positivism
• Human behaviour is product of the external forces in the environment to which they
are exposed.
• Stimuli in their environment condition them to behave and respond to events in
predictable and determinate way.
• A network of causal relationships links all important aspects of behaviour in social
world. Though human perception may influence this process to some degree, people
always respond to situations in a lawful (rule-governed) manner.
• Thus, human beings are responders to concrete reality.
• A cause will have the same effect on everyone.
• We can learn about people by observing their behaviour, what we see in external
reality. This is more important than what happens in internal, subjective reality. In other
words, people respond to external forces that are as real as physical forces on objects.
• Durkheim (1938: 27) stated that social phenomenon are things and ought to be
studied as things. This emphasis on observable, external reality suggests that
researchers may not have to examine unseen internal motivations.
Interpretivism
• Human construct social reality, which is fluid and fragile.
• Ordinary people are engaged in an ongoing process of creating systems of
meaning through social interaction. They then use such meanings to
interpret their social world and make sense of their lives.
• Human behaviour may be patterned and regular, but this is not due to
pre-existing laws and waiting to be discovered. The pattern results from
evolving meaning systems or social conventions that people generate as
they socially interact.
• People have their own reasons for their actions, and the researcher need
to learn the reasons people use. Individual motives are crucial to consider
even if they are irrational, carry deep emotions, and contain false facts and
prejudice. It makes little sense to try to reduce social life from abstract,
logical theories that may not relate to feelings and experiences of ordinary
people.
 Human Agency and Social World
Positivism
• Positivists look at how external forces and structures operate on
individuals and produce outcomes (i.e. human behaviour). So they
emphasize determinate relationships and look for determining
causes and mechanisms that produce effects.
• They downplay an individual’s subjective reasons or sense of free
choice. Mental processes are less central than structural forces
beyond individual control that exert influence over choices and
behaviours. While individuals may feel that they can act freely,
positivists emphasize that powerful social pressures operating on
people shape most if not all of their actions.
• The causal laws are probabilistic and hold for large groups of
people or occur in many situations. Researchers can estimate the
predicted behaviour.
Interpretivism
• Interpretivism sees people being able to make
conscious choices. Social settings and subjective
points of view help to shape the choices a
person makes, but people create and change
those settings and have the ability to develop
or form a point of view.
• They emphasize the importance of taking into
account individual decision making processes,
subjective feelings, and ways to understanding
events.
 What they look for or purpose of social research

Positivism
To discover and document universal causal laws of human
behaviour.
• Generalize from observations on social phenomenon to make
statements about the behaviour of the population as a whole.
•In this process, positivism explains human behaviour in terms of
cause and effect (traditional through hypothesis).

Interpretivism
To develop an understanding of social life and discover how people
construct meaningful social action in a social context.
 What is factual information and good
evidence?
Positivism
• Positivists assign a privilege position status to empirical observation, and we can
observe these empirical facts using our sense organs, and these facts are
fundamentally distinct from ideas and values. So good evidence is observable
and precise.

Interpretivism
• Interpretivists see the features of specific context and meanings as essential to
understanding social reality.
• Evidence about social action cannot be isolated from the context in which it
occurs or the meanings assigned to it by the social actors involved.
• Social facts are fluid and embedded within the meaning system; they are not
impartial, objective, and neutral.
 
 Defining Positivism and Interpretivism
Positivist social science is an organized method for combining
deductive logic with precise empirical observations of
individual behaviour in order to discover and confirm a set of
probabilistic causal laws that can be used to predict general
patterns of human activity.

Interpretative Social Science is an approach to social research

that emphasizes meaningful social action, socially constructed
meanings, and value relativism.
 Qualitative Research in Focus:
Underlying concepts of qualitative
research methodology

•“Verstehen” and “Understanding”

•The “Emic” and “Etic” perspectives
•“Subjectivity” and need for “Reflexivity”
 Verstehen and Understanding
• The interpretive approach can be further clarified by explaining the difference
between understanding and Verstehen.

• Main difference: a main focus of qualitative research is to understand the

behaviours, perceptions, or experiences. However, understanding can be viewed
from two different perspectives: from that of the researcher using their own
frame of reference on the issue, which is referred to as understanding; and from
those of the study population by indentifying their perspective on the research
issues, which is referred to as Verstehen.

• So Verstehen refers to understanding the life of the people whom you study
from their own perspective, in their own context and describing this using their
own words, concepts, and subjective meanings that they attach to their views
and experiences (insider’s perspective).
 In Qualitative Research:
Focus is on
• Social actors
• Social context
• Subjective meanings of the insiders
• Construction of social reality as a result fluid process of
social interaction among social actors
• Social actors gives meanings to social action, social acts
do not possess inherent meanings
 The Emic and Etic perspectives
• The concept of the emic perspective links closely to the
concept of Verstehen.

• The emic perspective provides information on the

insider’s point of view, the inside’s perceptions, beliefs,
and meaning system. It thus reflects the cultural
meanings that people attach to certain facts, events, or
experiences.

• The etic perspective refers to the outsider’s point of

view, their opinion, and beliefs.
 Subjectivity and the Need for Reflexivity
•The interpretive approach acknowledges subjectivity. It
acknowledges that the perspectives of study participants
reflect their subjective views of their social world and that
researcher also bring their subjective influences to the
research process, particularly during data collection and
interpretation. The interpretive approach acknowledges
that the researcher’s background, position, or emotions are
an integral part of the process of producing data (Finlay and
Gouch, 2003).
•Reflexivity is a process that involves conscious self reflection and
self scrutiny on the part of researchers to make explicit their
potential influence, through their roles and actions, on the research
process. Through reflexivity, qualitative researcher reflects on their
subjectivity, on how their social background (values, gender,
identity, ideologies etc), assumptions, positioning, and behaviour
impact the research process, and on how research participants
react to the researcher, and the research settings. Self awareness of
the researcher is important.

•Interactional and constructional nature of epistemological

processes involved in the qualitative research necessitate the
researcher to engage in the research process in a reflexive way.
•There can be three cross cutting and intersectional types of
reflexivity

Personal reflexivity: a researcher to reflect how his personal

involvement can inform, influence, and act upon research process
and results. Issues of identity, values, ideology, gender, dressing etc.

Interpersonal reflexivity: sensitivity to situational dynamics

between the researcher and researched that can impact the
research process: issues related with social and political setting,
interview setting, gender etc.

Epistemological reflexivity (methodological openness and

decisions): context of research, assumptions made, questions
asked, data collections methods and data analysis techniques and
their implications on the research process and data production.
•The researchers need to use reflexivity
continuously throughout the research process to
reflect on any potential influences of personal,
interpersonal, and epistemological nature.

•Awareness of the social context, both

social/cultural and political contexts, is essential.

•Issues of personal disclosure and disclosure about

research
 Direction of Theorizing and the relationships
between theory and research
• The researchers approach the building and testing of
theory from two directions. Some begin with abstract
thinking and logically connect the ideas in theory to
concrete evidence, then test the ideas against the evidence.
Others begin with specific observations and then on the
basis of the evidence, they build towards increasingly
abstract ideas.
• In other words, theories structure and inform sociological
research. So, too, does research structure and inform
theory.
 Deductive Approach
• Deductive direction is an approach to confirming a theory that
begins with abstract concepts and theoretical proposition that
outlines the logical connection among concepts and then moves
towards concrete empirical evidence.
• The researcher starts with a social theory that they find
compelling and then test its implication with data. That is, they
move from a more general level to a more specific one.
• A deductive approach to research is the one that people typically
associate with specific investigation. The researcher studies what
others have done, reads existing theories of whatever
phenomenon he or she is studying, and then tests hypothesis that
emerges from those theories.
 Inductive Approach
• To theorize in an inductive direction, the researchers begin with
observing the empirical world and then reflect on what is taking
place, thinking in increasingly more abstract ways, moving towards
theoretical concepts and propositions.
• Whereas deductive theorizing requires you to begin with a clearly
thought out theoretical picture, with inductive theorizing you can
begin with a general topic and some vague ideas that you then
refine and elaborate into more exact theoretical concepts.
• In inductive theorizing you build from observations on the ground
to more abstract thinking, whereas in deductive theorizing you
move from ideas towards grounded empirical observations.
• In other words, a researcher begins by collecting data that is
relevant to his/her topic of interest and looks for patterns in the
data, working to develop a theory that could explain those patterns.
Thus they move from data to theory or from the specific to the
general.